*Nix Utility for monitoring total bw usage (monthly)?
 

hi fellow webmasters, i am in need of a utility that i can install on our server that will monitor the total amount of bandwidth burned for a monthly period (in gigabytes)... we currently pay a flat fee for a 20Mb/s capped line, and are not sure if we are getting the great deal we think we are.

we'd like to see what the total of used bandwidth is to calculate whether we should just be buying uncapped bw from now on, so any information about this would be great... we are running freeBSD on our co-lo, btw... thx all..!

bandmin


Btw bud you never icqed me about your questions. I have time now, hit me up 91603384

Your host isn't supplying you with mrtg stats ?


If not you may want to talk to me ... if they cannot prove your bandwidth how are they billing you?

yep mrtg graph tells you want you need

Do they tell you if you cap out ever?

It appears they bill based on a cap line, 20 Mb/s as chupacabra mentioned so there is no need to show how many GB have been transferred.

chupacabra, there are many ways to measure bandwidth usage. MRTG is one of the good ones and is relatively easy to setup, you might even be able to setup it on your server if your host gives you access to the switch.

You could use the Apache logs, but these tend to be off by 10% or more, same with bandmin. There are also some Apache modules you could try using and although these allow you to do some interesting things (cap bandwidth per site/directory/file/file type/local user/remote user/IP/referral etc.) they are also somewhat off compared to the actual bandwidth.

If you need some help setting it up or would like to know more about some of the amazing things that can be done on a dedicated server related to bandwidth management, feel free to contact me.

u burning that much bw you should have ALL tools available to you from your host!

HotSaNIC works great too. I like that a lot.

If you have your own server, you don't need access to the switch
to see how much bandwidth you're using. Try reading the file /proc/net/dev

You should see how many bytes were sent in and out on each of your network devices. You can either configure mrtg to use that info, or write your own script to do the calculations.

You are right, but you have to admit setting up MRTG to use basic SNMP with default config is much easier than reading and interpreting /proc/net/dev :) Also using the switch data will save a little bit of resources on the server and might be slightly more accurate.

What do you mean? Are you suggesting running everything at the same time?

Depending on your kernel version, try:

ifconfig eth0
eg.

[root@plain root]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13: DE:31:61:31
inet addr:x.x.x.x Bcast:x.x.x.x Mask:255.255.254.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:14003481 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4449232 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:7 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:3443282835 (3283.7 Mb)
TX bytes:3747839100 (3574.2 Mb)

Last 2 lines are probably (maybe : ) what you want.

Robert,

Those ifconfig stats you show actually roll over at 4 GB, so they are not very useful if you want to see how much GB's you transfer in total.

They can be used if you read them regularly (every 10 minutes or so) and use the resulting data with something like MRTG though.

Greetings,

Art